One of my favorite Dragon songs is on this album (the jaunty "Grey Lynn Candy") but despite the more pronounced pop vibes it's easy to consider this a less essential rehash of the debut.
Dragon's debut has been pigeonholed as a second or third-rate prog-rock product, but that misses the mark. Essentially, they melded Traffic's pastoral art-rock approach with classier Procol Harum-style pop and progressive instincts, throwing in a healthy dose of their own quirky personality and character. There's only six songs but it doesn't ever feel like it drags (like a lot of other prog rock records) as even at this early point in their career these savvy-before-their-time New Zealanders are fairly good with a pop hook ("Going Slow"). They have no qualms jamming out on longer passages either, as the dual suite of "Weetbix" followed by "Graves" shows. Solid performance overall.
So here is an interesting case – old-school archival label Cleopatra Records decided to unearth this rarity and release to the public after some forty-odd years – the essentially “lost” album which Marriott and Greg Ridley were recording as a separate project from Humble Pie. The Ridley-Marriott pairing was more focused on what would seem to be a rather confused R&B/Soul/Funk/Hard Rock hybrid, and that is why it suffers, because they were trying to do too many things at once, and then plain just ran themselves ragged. There are individual tracks here and there which are notable. For example, TWO covers of James Brown’s “Think” – one with a drum machine and a second with live drums and sax solos called “Think 2”. “This Ol’ World” and “Midnight of my Life”, on the other hand, ring out like funeral pyres for the band itself. The version of “Rain” that is heard on this album as well. They sound so tired and down-trodden. The only real, heavy rocker is “Let Me Be Your Lovemaker” which, feels pretty subdued in the middle of these soul ballads and piece-meal exercises like “Snakes & Ladders” and “Charlene”, where you can tell everyone was just wanting the thing to come to an end. And I think that is the other aspect of Joint Effort which is notable – the feeling of bringing the proper end to what was really a nice run for the band, when all is said and done.
